The outreach programme of the Reserve Bank of India is yet to make any big impact on the target audience.

The RBI Governor, Mr D. Subbarao, in his oration at IOB’s Platinum Jubilee function, said, “The actual benefits of the programme, aimed at financial inclusion, have not reached the backward communities in villages, which were the real target,” he said.

There have been a lot of complaints that most of the Banking Correspondents are not well informed about the system and they have not been trained properly. As a result, “there is no trust existing between the customers and the BCs, for now,” he said.

He added that there was a lack of awareness among the people about the grievances and redressal mechanism of the banking industry too.

He also noted that there were a disappointingly large number of cases of bank branches with low customer footfalls, as business correspondents drifted off after a few months. ‘No frills’ accounts remained largely inoperative.

Banks should look upon financial inclusion not as an obligation but as an opportunity to build a “fortune at the bottom of the pyramid”.

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